Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
I’m not quite sure how, or why, you get to Witching & Bitching from Las brujas de Zugarramurdi, but to be fair, it does fit.
José (Hugo Silva) and Antonio (Mario Casas) rob a pawn shop of their stock of wedding rings and make their escape, hijacking Manuel (Jaime Ordóñez)’s taxi and making for the French border, with José’s son Sergio (Gabriel Delgado) dragged along for the ride. Well, it was his day to look after the kid, much to estranged wife Silvia (Macarena Gómez)’s distaste.
The crime does not go unnoticed, and the crew are chased by Silvia and two police inspectors, Pacheco (Secun de la Rosa) and Calvo (Pepón Nieto), to the Navarrese town of Zugarramurdi, unknowingly playing into the wider plans of the resident witches.
Head witch Graciana (Carmen Maura) has a plan to claim Sergio as their chosen one for world domination, and not cook and eat him, as her mother Maritxu (Terele Pávez) absent-mindedly tries, and they set about capturing Sergio and crew, aided by Graciana’s daughter Eva (Carolina Bang) and, of course, their supernatural powers.
Understandably none too chuffed at the prospect of being Wickermanned, the lads attempt to escape the witches mansion they soon find themselves tied up in, aided by Eva who has fallen in love with José, largely for plot reasons, leading to a chaotic final act full of computer generated peril and offbeat shenanigans that kind of lost me, if I’m being honest.
Which is a shame, as the earlier two, only more grounded by comparison acts of the heist and the chase by cops, then witches, was a lot of fun, with a number of pretty funny lines and performances. Some of that’s still there in the closing reels, but it’s maybe leaning a bit too heavily on the CG for a bit of spectacle rather than going for the laughs, which is what I’m here for.
Again, I think attempting to divine deep meaning from a Álex de la Iglesia joint is probably an over-analysis too far, and while I perhaps prefer the more chaotic rawness of his earlier films, I’d still say that there’s more than enough laughs to be extracted from Witching and Bitching to make it worth your while.